


it's not hard to fall when you float like a cannonball

by we-protect-each-other (failsafe)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Catching Fire Spoilers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mockingjay Spoilers, POV First Person, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/we-protect-each-other
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss tries to teach Peeta how to swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not hard to fall when you float like a cannonball

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pukajen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukajen/gifts).



> Title taken from "Cannonball" by Damien Rice.
> 
> Spoilers for/references to all three books in The Hunger Games trilogy.

My eyes follow the marks Peeta makes on the page, opposite a long burst of painstakingly neat handwriting that belongs to me. I can see where the pressure of my writing darkened and thickened the lines, corresponding with the moments when I clenched my teeth in anger or struggled for deep breaths that wouldn't turn into easy, overwhelming sobs. Some days it's harder than others, to write down those things that I refuse to forget.

Peeta had reached out and squeezed my shoulder, his thumb running up a cord of tension in my neck, his hand as steady as it is now while he draws on the paper. He had asked me if I wanted to stop and I snapped at him, but his hand stayed in place for a while anyway. Finally, I had wiped roughly at my face, drying beneath my eyes and against my cheeks and kept writing, causing yet another of the dark marks on a line.

I can't stop writing, even when it's harder to write down the things that had felt like hope, that had made me smile at the time. The things that I might say made me happy are the ones that bring me most dangerously close to stopping. They're all gone now, those moments, taken away or simply over, but I can't forget them. Peeta has forgotten too much, lost too much in his mind, for the both of us.

The sketch begins to take shape from the initial, seemingly random soft lines that look a little chaotic to me. I rub beneath my strained eyes and lean forward across the kitchen table against my elbows to watch more closely as the page becomes something almost living, the ghost of a moment I recalled on the page beside it. When I glance up at him, there is a faint smile on Peeta's lips and I know I'm not returning it. Instead, my mouth is a little agape and I reach for the book impulsively. The edge of the cover brushes against my fingertips as Peeta slides it over to me so I can see the image in the direction it's meant to be seen. I can't help but marvel at how deep the piece of paper has become, as if I could step into it. He captures the past as easily as any photograph, more easily. The drawing looks, feels _real_ , and it's not even finished yet. 

“It's good,” I say, remembering that I should probably give Peeta some kind of positive feedback for simply being here with me, for holding onto what he knows. It's more than that, though. It's so easy to forget. For such a long time I was _without_ him. First he was left behind, taken by the Capitol and I spent all that time in District 13, wishing for a person to be safe, to be there with me—a person who would never really come home. Then Peeta did come back, different, and then gone forever. The boy with the bread, the boy on the beach, not mine anymore and unreachable. Even with the pieces of him that seem to come back and to become a bit more real, natural each day, it's easy to lose just how much of it he was there for. I spent so much time trying and failing to steel myself against the raw, painful truth that the steady, naively adoring, _real_ Peeta was gone, dead, killed in some cold sterile room in the Capitol, that I still don't dare let myself believe that he'll really come back, stay with me. But he was there for so much of what has happened to me, since that first reaping, and what he has drawn matches what's in my head, but he hasn't drawn it just from my writing. It's in his head, too. It belongs to him and he's sorted it free from the shiny, false memories the Capitol gave him. 

“Thanks,” he replies in a leading tone that I'm sure is trying to draw a returned smile from me, like he doesn't believe I mean the compliment but only in jest. 

“... I'm going to get some air,” I announce abruptly, pushing the book back firmly into Peeta's possession and getting up from my chair. 

“I'll come with you,” Peeta asserts, getting up with an urgency that almost startles me and still makes me worry about his leg. We just stare at each other for a moment and he reaches out to carefully close the book and set it out of harm's way. It's just a reminder that there's no one ever there besides us to spill anything on it or to damage it at all. The world is so still now. 

“I'm going out into the woods,” I tell him, almost hoping that it will deter him from following me, but I guess it might be a bit of a test, too. I'm just not sure what I'm testing for. 

“... And I'll make too much noise,” Peeta supplies, not quite a question. He looks down, away from me, apparently disappointed. 

“No,” I say quickly and then wonder why I did. Now I've trapped myself, though, and have to keep going with the train of thought. “... No, I'm not going to hunt. If anything it might... keep anything from wanting to sneak up on me.” 

Peeta's expression brightens a little and he pushes up the chair I had been sitting in, too and moves to follow me out the door. There's a little spark of satisfaction that runs through me when I see some kind of life go back into him at the promise of coming into the woods with me, but I don't trust it. I take a few backward steps and then turn around, tensely leading the way out the door, my thumbs sliding down into my trouser pockets for a moment until I pull them back out, compelled to fidget. 

I'm meandering toward town and eventually on to the fence, so Peeta easily catches pace with me and we walk along in silence for a while. It only occurs to me after several minutes to glance over at him to see whether he seems to be enjoying it. I remember the last time he and I walked into town together. I'd asked him if he would run away with me—not just with me, though. My family, his, Haymitch—all gone now except for Haymitch who has enough liquor to last him at least another week or two. For a moment I want to hide my eyes from what remains of the 12 I knew, from what they're building back on top of it, but I keep my feet moving, going through the motions. 

“Are you alright?” Peeta asks. 

“Great,” I reply, a little breathlessly. I'm a little surprised at my attempt at sarcasm, but then I'm too busy worrying about seeing the raw earth above the mass grave that the Meadow has become. It still isn't much easier and Peeta being with me makes me even more aware. Soon we're passing by where the bakery once was and I notice the momentary falter and subsequent quickening of his step. All the things I know about his family with the exception of his father are somehow negative and fill me with resentment. His bruised face, the way the one brother who could have didn't step up to take his place, but if he had then I'd never have known Peeta at all. The thought gives me pause and I wonder if I should ask him if he misses them, but I know he must and I don't want to talk about all the things I miss anymore today. Instead, I reach out and brush my fingertips along the edge of Peeta's hand, not quite taking it in mine but drawing his attention down to my fingers and then up to my face. I expect some conversation to follow but instead Peeta takes my hand, apparently perceiving some invitation and I don't revoke it. 

When we finally reach the edge of 12, Peeta finally lets go and reaches down to hold up a section of the fencing for me as if I hadn't been crawling under on my own for years. This earns him a strange look from me for a moment, but I'm about to just accept it and squirm my way beneath to show him how at the very least when he speaks up. 

“Finally getting out of the district with you... Running away,” he muses lowly, offering a sad smile in place of the hopeful, searching one I've gotten almost used to getting sometimes. The thought that his thoughts run along the same tracks that mine do, that the moments that make up my memory of the past are so entwined with his makes something catch in my throat and I try to swallow it. I search his eyes for a moment and then look abruptly down at the ground at the looser section of the fence down at the bottom that's familiar. 

“We can't run away anymore, Peeta,” I say simply, not sure why his name rolls from my tongue. There's nothing left worth running from and what's left of 12 is all that's left of home. Then I take a deep breath and get down closer to the ground to step through and roll my body beneath the fence to the other side. “Like this,” I say, settling my balance once I've gotten through to the other side.  
  
Peeta listlessly lets go of what he'd been trying to hold up for me and instead reaches out for the loose one and tries mimicking my movements with as much grace as he's ever managed. He makes it through, but when he's trying to get his balance again, I hear a metallic snapping that makes me terrified that the electrical current in the fence has gone live again even though I know better. Instead of being electrocuted, Peeta just stumbled back a little and I instinctively reach up to stop his progress backward and my hand against his back seems to give him the stability he needs to stop. He's holding the fencing still when he's much too far out from it because it has snapped away from one of its posts. I stare at it and at the slacked gap that it's now left just above the ground, a window between two places, the woods and the district, that I still can't imagine ever really touching. 

The breaths that follow from me are a little halted and I find myself looking back at Peeta and wondering just how it was that he survived two arenas, even with my help—and then without it. I swallow hard and try forcing the kind of tentative, hopeful smile he gives me. 

“Are you okay?” I ask. 

Peeta nods and looks down at the fencing he's holding and lets it down gently, as if it might minimize the damage. While he does this, I look out beyond him and try to decide where to take him. The idea of taking him to the place where Gale and I looked out for such a long time seems wrong, off, so I set off to guide him deeper into the woods toward the only other landmark I can really think of. 

\- - - 

“I didn't know this was here,” Peeta comments with some measure of awe when we're at the edge of the lake, surveying around it, focusing for a moment on the ancient, untouched building hidden away by time. 

“You didn't know any of this was out here,” I remind him. Peeta exhales in the same halted way I had at the fence and hearing it from someone else, I realize it's some attempt at a laugh that something broken within each of us blocks from escaping. “... My father brought me here. That's... how I knew how to swim,” I tell him with the most careful confidence I can, as if someone else might be around to hear us and I don't want them to. There's no one else, but I still feel some kind of vulnerability as I admit it. 

“I still don't really know how to swim,” Peeta replies after a moment I realize was filled with some acknowledging reverence. 

“I know,” I say quietly, giving him that same attempt at a smile and this time we both manage it at the same time. I walk a few paces around the lake's shore and find a gap in the trees were unobstructed sunlight touches down, warming the earth. Then I sit down, leaning back a little against the heels of my hands and nodding for Peeta to do the same if he wants. 

He joins me after a moment and I notice that he's looking at me in the light with startling clarity, his gaze moving down until it falls against my stomach. I straighten a little and draw up my knees, tugging down at my shirt but finding that an extra fold of fabric bunches against my thin body. I'm not actually emaciated the way I got dangerously close to being at one point since we got home, but I'm not wearing the clothes that still hang in my closet that were from Cinna, tailored for the girl I used to be. 

“I could teach you,” I decide quickly, looking up to Peeta's face and hoping to catch his eyes, to steal them away from my body. 

“What?” he asks, startled. 

“I could teach you how to swim,” I say more idly, hugging my knees and then leaning my chin against one of them. 

“Are you sure--” Peeta starts to ask dubiously, looking out at the water contemplatively. 

“I taught Gale,” I say quickly, cutting off any argument and staring out at the water, my face flushed with something I tell myself isn't shame. There's no reason for it to be, but I can't deny that there's a tightness in my stomach that no longer feels like confusion, really. Gale's gone, too, and I don't _need_ him. When silence is what follows, I finally furtively glance over at Peeta and am relieved when I realize he hasn't become angry. Instead, I see him nod if only to himself and then shift to get back up to his feet. 

“Okay,” he agrees as he offers me a hand I don't need to help me up. I get up on my own anyway, dusting my hands off on my pants and glancing at the water as I consider what I need to do. Again I've volunteered for something without thinking it through, without letting myself think it through because I can't stand the alternative. Now I've put Peeta's life in my hands again without any hesitation. For a moment all I can see in the water is the potential for him to sink beneath into the shadows provided by the trees. Even if I could get him back to shore, I don't know how to do the pressing on his chest, the kissing him that Finnick had known how to do to breathe air and life back into him. I simply can't let that happen. I can't let Peeta drown, can't let him die. 

“You've got to do everything I tell you,” I insist when I face back to him, cementing my demand with a stern expression. 

“Yeah,” Peeta agreed with some kind of dismissive reassurance, widening his eyes at me a little. “I know... I've got no idea what to do in water much deeper than a bathtub.” 

I catch my breath and nod, first at him and then toward the water.

“Take off your clothes,” I tell him, not making eye contact as my hands go down to the bottom hem of my shirt. I realize too late that I hadn't really thought through the idea of distracting Peeta from looking at me. The only way I can get myself to proceed with taking off my shirt is steeling myself with as many layers of defiance as I can to remind myself why it shouldn't matter. As the fabric catches on my fingers and drags up across my stomach, I remember how I'd once tried everything to insist that I not take off Peeta's pants to examine and clean an almost certainly fatal wound. Now my body is scarred, lines running across it where surgeons have left marks where once different doctors had removed all traces of everything I'd ever touched, but Peeta has scars, too. 

“What?” Peeta asks, breaking my resolve with a single syllable and causing me to quickly lower my shirt back down just as it had made its way midway up my abdomen. I look at him, nearly glaring but then realize that it's pointless. He hasn't suddenly grown shy or reprimanding or squeamish I gradually realize. He's just surprised, confused. 

“... So the water won't drag. You're less likely to get hurt if you're not all weighed down.” 

Peeta considers and smiles wryly. 

“Just never thought I'd hear you say that to anyone.” 

“You can leave your underwear on if you want,” I say calmly, having resolutely decided to keep mine on. There had been no secrets about my body between my stylists and me, but Peeta is different. He's seen me nearly naked quite a number of times and I think of the way my last arena outfit had torn. Only then does it occur to me that I've brought Peeta back to another shore, another _beach_ , but even as I narrow my eyes at him I cannot imagine being the girl, him being the boy that had lost themselves to something I still can't name in one another's kisses. It just makes my skin flush and a lump of regret weigh on my chest and then my throat. 

“Deal,” Peeta agrees and then he's pulling off his shirt and I decide to let mine join his at the same time. I get mine over my head just seconds after he's dropped his to the ground and then I'm glad I am wearing a real bra rather than simply wrapping my chest the way I had done before I'd ever gone to the Capitol. I'd owned one bra before then. When I hear my shirt fall down against his I look up for a second and catch him doing the same. I'm not sure if it makes it easier or harder, to have our knowledge of the state of one another's bodies become experience and reality. We don't approach each other and there's nothing said about it, but scarred we are but he's remarkably the same. I just momentarily let myself wonder if he thinks the same about me. Then under some silent agreement we look away from each other again, not quite making full turns toward the water as we both remove our shoes—it takes Peeta a little longer with his artificial left leg but not much anymore—and then our trousers join our shirts on the ground in a mingled pile. 

The next time our eyes meet, I hurry over to the edge of the water, feeling the more coarse soil beneath my bare feet. I kneel down and brace myself for the feeling of water completely surrounding my body for the first time since the last arena and am helplessly reminded of Annie for a second. It won't be abrupt, though, or terrifying, to wade out into the water until it's deep enough to lose my footing. I look up when Peeta joins me and my eyes run along the complex artificial limb that he hardly seems to notice at all now. 

“What do we do first?” he asks. 

“Are you afraid of the water?” I ask, getting back up as I feel less compelled to curl my body in against itself. 

“I'm afraid of drowning,” Peeta quips but he doesn't seem very nervous. He trusts me now. He's always trusted me, even when he shouldn't have, as long as he could _remember_ that he wanted to. 

“Don't be,” I demand, then let my expression soften, looking over at him less intensely as I swallow down the anger I feel at the suggestion. “I'm not going to let you,” I say more quietly. I reach for his hand again, a little less reluctantly than back in town, taking it gradually with my fingers. “First we need to get you used to the water. We can wade out for a little while, but let me keep a step ahead so I can feel for where it drops off,” I explain, taking the first two steps out into the water. I take a deeper breath, surprised at how cool it is on the warm day. Peeta follows me and I glance back and see his jaw tighten a little once we're deep enough for him to feel the water up to his right knee. 

“Colder than you'd think,” he comments. 

I look up at the canopy of trees that almost completely surrounds us and nod in that direction as I look back down to meet his eyes. 

“Lots of shade and it's not really into the summer yet. We can go in a little faster,” I suggest with a bit more of a smile that I feel tightening my cheeks, almost instantly making them ache. “If you think it'll help.” 

“You're the mentor,” he replies easily and for a second I wonder if I should give into the stinging the word causes. Haymitch isn't a mentor anymore and the word doesn't hold the same meaning it did in the world before. I guide Peeta a little further into the water, focusing on its rippling surface to keep him from noticing how my brow has furrowed. I catch our reflections anyway in the part of the water that's illuminated by our gap in the trees and I remember the way Finnick would joke about dying so easily with a rope, how it made us laugh. Laughing then might be one reason I'm alive, we're alive, today even though Finnick is gone. I frown a little more tightly and then all at once I'm letting myself smile again and nodding as I look back up. “Don't let yourself tense up. Your muscles cramping is one of the easiest ways to drown if you can't stand up,” I warn patiently. 

Peeta nods and looks apprehensively further out into the lake, but he just tightens his grip on my hand. He trusts me. 

He trusts me, so I take his other hand and feel my feet backward along into the lake, letting myself trust him a little, too. Sometimes I feel a tiny plant snap beneath my feet but my feet are tough enough for it to not cause me any real pain and when I'm confident about how far we can go back I try and get a little momentum to draw us both into the water about chest deep. The sound that's drawn abruptly from my mouth is a shrill gasp as the sensation of unexpected cold overwhelms me for a moment. I know I'm breaking the rule I just gave Peeta, my body tense as I try not to shiver, but we're both still firmly on foot. I open my eyes, letting them refocus on Peeta's face and he's grinning but his breath has quickened, too, and I think one of the reasons his teeth show with his smile if that he's trying not to chatter them. 

“Try kneeling down,” I get out, leaning a little until I've bent at my knees and feel them knock his, the water rising higher against my body. Peeta follows my instruction and I can feel his body heat and then a faint indication of his heartbeat as I move my cautious grip up from his hand along his arm until I feel the firm muscles just beneath his shoulders. We search each other's eyes and then Peeta's teeth do chatter once and I'm breathing fast, but this time it's that same thing I had recognized earlier as an attempt to laugh. This time I try letting myself and a faint sound comes out and it's unfamiliar, foreign even, but it catches Peeta's attention as much as mine and he smiles in return. “It gets easier after a few minutes,” I try telling him, reminding myself as I find myself wishing that the rest of the water were as warm as I feel where my skin almost touches Peeta's. 

He moves abruptly in the water and I flinch, but then he's just reaching for my hair, catching some of it that has come loose on the side opposite my braid that falls along the side of my face. He draws it out a little and examines it quietly before tucking it behind my ear, his hands a little less steady than they usually are. He's still trying not to shiver and so am I. I feel my eyelids closing when his damp fingertips brush against the dry skin of my ear, but I quickly try to just move past it and swallow down what I'm afraid might be sadness coming back again. 

“The next thing you need to do is get out where your toes barely touch, and--” 

“Katniss,” Peeta interjects, a soft plea. It catches me off guard so I stop and purse my lips to listen. “It's too cold,” he explains without delay, laughing softly without that broken hesitation. 

“No, it's--” I try to persuade him gently but then my words catch because I'm breathing deeply again against the cool water. It's not warm enough to just get used to comfortably. Then I'm laughing too and run my hand up to his shoulder on his right only to lightly push. I don't push hard enough to let him go, though. Even though there's no danger, I'm not about to let him think there's any either. I don't want to frighten him and that's also when it's the worst for him, more likely that he'll _forget_ for a while again and have to find some focus, some kind of pain to hang onto what's real. “Okay. We'll try again in June.” 

Then I let go of him and wait long enough to make sure he's headed out of the water too and make my way back to the shore. At the edge, we both sit down and I still stubbornly try letting my toes dip into the water. I know that I  _could_ swim in it if I needed to, but the season hasn't warmed enough yet to teach Peeta. Peeta must read my expression as disappointment or something because he immediately tries to reassure me. 

“I don't think I really _need_ to know how to swim anyway,” he says. 

“You should know if you ever--” I start to snap in reply but then I stop arguing and won't even let myself follow that thought through to conclusion. Peeta looks over at me expectantly but doesn't demand completion. Suddenly weary, I look behind us and move a little closer to the pile of our clothes and decide to let my skin dry a little before I put mine back on. I lie back against the ground, feeling grass against my back and the sun warming my skin. Peeta's eyes follow my movements and this time I don't try covering the network of scars on my skin or anything else, deciding that it really doesn't matter. 

“Thanks for letting me come with you,” he says, taking a deep breath that isn't quite a sigh before he follows suit and lies down on his back. I wonder if he's disappointed somehow and about what before I realize that I am. There's an emptiness that settles into my chest again and I'm thinking of being back on shore, back on the edge of something I can't have anymore. I look across the space between us, the full width of the pile of our clothes. I've lain beside Peeta so many times now, shielded from nightmares and darkness by his arms, but the light of day somehow chases away his regained freedom to hold me and all at once I hate it. 

“Peeta--” I start, not quite sure what I want to say. I'm not very good at saying something, not even when I need to desperately. His name gets his attention, though, and I lock eye contact with him and try and let it invite me in the way I'm certain he'd been trying too so many times before we lost so much, back when I couldn't see. I crawl the short space over to him and inch by inch settle into my place at his side, easing into the feeling of his skin's warmth the way I'd tried to ease into the water's cold. 

“Katniss,” I'm answered when I feel him tensing again. 

“Shh,” I try to insist, but then I realize that I'm in his space as much as I'm drawing him into mine. I lean against my arm and look down into his eyes and glance down his chest for a moment before I manage to ask. “Is this okay?” 

Peeta nods and shifts to tentatively put out his arm for me and I lower myself down, even more drawn to lying beside him now that I have started to feel some sense of relief now that I've begun the slow, arduous process of working through countless seemingly impossible questions so painlessly. For the first time in a while, I'm too tired to resist a feeling so good as relief and I try tucking my head down against Peeta's damp chest, my ear pressed to the place were I can hear his heartbeat. He moves, though and grabs his shirt from the pile of clothes.  


“Wait a second,” he instructs quietly, placing the soft fabric over his shoulder and one side of his chest. “It's dry,” he explains when I look at him with a slight frown. Agreeing to what I feel deeply, almost viscerally is a compromise, I nod and finally find the place against him where the old Katniss would have fit with the old Peeta, more than she ever knew. I can't get comfortable against the shirt, though. I let my arm extend over him, feeling his body heat move through me at each place where I can find contact. A breeze blows across the lake and I roll over slightly toward Peeta and he wraps his arm protectively around me. The real Peeta still wants to protect me. I look down at the color of his shirt and take a deep breath, smelling Peeta's skin on it and deciding that I'd rather see it, too, scars and all. 

“Peeta, it's okay,” I tell him. Then I look up at his face and catch him looking quizzically at me. “It's okay,” I repeat. “We can still--” But then I stop talking, face flushing as I realize at least in part what I'm asking for and feel ashamed. 

“... Katniss, what's wrong?” Peeta prompts, reaching up and touching the bottom of my damp braid, the way he had touched me before. “What are you talking about?” 

I don't want to talk about it because I don't know what to say, so I pull back and think about moving away from him again but then remember something that had worked a long time ago. My lips press to his and I can't quite remember what to do. I'm not the girl who simply, clumsily did back on the beach. Instead, it's so unnaturally still for a moment that I'm not sure it counts as a kiss and that it might even be worse than the first time I'd tried for the cameras. 

Then Peeta's hand moves from where he'd pinched the very bottom of my braid to the side of my neck where he steadies me gently and his lips move against mine in turn. His movements are tight, halting as my own, unfamiliar and learning how to do it again, even though it'd always come more naturally to him. After just a moment he tilts his chin down and breaks the contact. I can feel my breath mingling warm and damp with his but he doesn't try for my lips again and I don't know if I should start feeling an even deeper ache of regret. I don't know if we've lost everything as much as I thought he had. 

“It's okay,” I plead this time. I'm answered with a light peck of a kiss against my lips that doesn't last at all and a nod that I can feel brushing against my own forehead. 

“Yeah, Katniss. Of course it's... okay,” he says, once again taking for granted something that terrifies me a little. I nod and pull back enough to meet his eyes and he smiles at me and I do too. “... I just... don't know what you want, sometimes,” he apologizes, glancing down. 

“Neither do I,” I say quickly, a little bitterly but then I realize this isn't the place, the moment for that. There actually is a time now for something else, something a little better. “... Stay with me,” I supply after a moment's searching my mind, the threatening hollow in my chest for the words. I grip at the fabric of his shirt with my fingertips but then realize that he can't feel the tugging and instead pull it back down to the ground beneath us. “Not just... when I have nightmares. When we walk through town or... anytime you need to, it's okay. Stay with me.” 

Peeta examines my face so intensely that for a moment I wonder if he recognizes me at all and I have to look away. 

“... Always,” he says, an echo and a reminder that he does remember. Then I can't look at him because I know my eyes are wet again but this time not because I'm sad or angry. Instead I press a kiss to his bared shoulder and another a little lower, water from the lake touching my lips. Another breeze blows across the water and over us and I hide from the cold against his body's warmth and feel his hand against the skin between my shoulder blades. When my eyes have stopped stinging, I press my cheek down against his chest, my ear down over his heart again, this time without the shirt between us. 

“I'll teach you how to swim when it's warmer,” I insist. 

“Yeah?” he prompts, sounding almost amused. 

“Well I can't teach you to hunt,” I reply and realize I'm teasing. He laughs again, though I know it's not very funny.

“I'll teach you how to bake when we get back,” he offers, bartering. 

“I know how to bake,” I argue, rolling toward him a little firmly and then back since I can't push him but he's undeterred. 

“Knowing how to make bread isn't the same,” he teases and I can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Fine,” I agree. “I'll let you teach me how to bake, or try. Later,” I try to appease him because I want him to be quiet. I hear him start to reply but I quickly hush him and turn my lips down to kiss lightly against his chest again. He starts to speak again and I sigh wearily and press another slightly more sure kiss to his mouth which he returns and I can feel him smiling against my lips. I wonder if he'd lured me into the kiss on purpose, but I decide I don't care as I break it again and feel my nose brush against the side of his. After a few more tentative, shared kisses I finally lie back down against his chest and he's content to be quiet so I close my eyes and let his heartbeat lull me half to sleep, not hidden away, cold in a cave but warm against his skin in the sunlight. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you like it, pukajen! I wanted to do something canon-compliant since you didn't indicate whether you liked AU things or not, so I hope examining some of the baggage didn't make it too dark for you. I tried to do something bittersweet during the period of time during which Katniss and Peeta "grow back together," at the end of Mockingjay since I always felt that the whole process was brushed over more quickly than I would have liked. Thank you to you and anyone else who reads!


End file.
